In many situations, it is common to have multiple networks available for media transport at the same time. It is also increasingly common for client devices to have simultaneous access to both wireless Internet Protocol (IP) and cellular networks. Media gateways may also have access to multiple paths or channels for delivery media. Furthermore, the consumption of multiple media streams at one time is not uncommon.
Typical methods that leverage the availability of multiple networks (or multiple paths) include: the selection of a preferred network based on a predefined policy, the selection of a preferred network based on an ordered list, or bandwidth aggregation. As such, previous approaches do not exploit the different delay and loss characteristics of the different networks for application gains.
In accordance with common practice the various features illustrated in the drawings may not be drawn to scale. Accordingly, the dimensions of the various features may be arbitrarily expanded or reduced for clarity. In addition, some of the drawings may not depict all of the components of a given system, method or device. Finally, like reference numerals may be used to denote like features throughout the specification and figures.